20 Die in Italy As U.S. Jet Cuts A Ski Lift Cable

By JOHN TAGLIABUE

Published: February 4, 1998

CAVALESE, Italy, Feb. 3—
A low-flying United States military jet on a training flight over the craggy Dolomite mountains here cut the cable of a ski lift today, sending a cable car plunging 260 feet into a snowy meadow and killing everyone aboard.

The authorities said 20 bodies had been recovered from the wreckage on a slope just south of this Alpine hamlet.

The Marine Corps plane made an emergency landing safely, and none of the four crew members were injured, a Marine spokesman said.

Local officials said they had complained repeatedly of low-flying military aircraft -- stunt-flying, some called it -- near these mountain cable systems, including instances when pilots flew below the cable lines on their way back to a NATO air base at Aviano, in northern Italy.

In nearby Trento, the President of the regional government, Carlo Andreotti, was quoted by the Italian news agency ANSA as saying, ''The military aircraft must stop playing war games, putting people's safety in grave danger.''

''Many people say the military planes even play games by actually passing under the cables of the ski lifts,'' said Mr. Andreotti, who was among officials who arrived here this afternoon.

The Pentagon's spokesman, Kenneth H. Bacon, said, ''There will have to be a full investigation.'' He added that it was premature to discuss the cause of the accident or any complaints about previous flights.

A Marine Corps spokesman in Washington, Maj. David LaPan, said tonight that reports of civilian complaints would be considered by an accident investigation team that was to leave the Marine Corps air station at Cherry Point, N.C., this evening.

The accident was the third involving cable cars here in little more than 20 years. The last incident, in 1987, involved a low-flying civilian plane that also sliced a cable and left 24 passengers hanging in a stranded car. That time, no one was killed.

The aircraft involved in today's accident, a sophisticated electronic surveillance jet known as an EA-6B ''Prowler,'' ordinarily used to patrol the skies over Bosnia to the east, returned to the Aviano base. The plane was only slightly damaged, the authorities said.

Italian television reported that 14 of the 20 dead had been identified. They included Italian, German, Belgian and Polish vacationers.

Soldiers of the Italian Army who carried the first bodies from the site of the crash described a scene of horror inside the crushed and overturned cable car. Bodies were twisted, they said, and the faces of the dead were described as contorted in terror.

Several rescuers, who worked with the help of a hydraulic crane, broke down during the work. A local Catholic priest blessed the bodies as they were taken away.

The crash occurred at about 3:30 P.M. local time, when residents of Cavalese said they heard a enormous boom at about the time the plane was thought to have hit the cable. Some people said the force of the boom was strong enough to shake light vehicles, much like a sonic boom.

With cranes and helicopters, rescue teams worked to remove bodies from the wreckage of the cable car. By late this evening, scraps of yellow steel lay scattered over a snowy meadow amidst fir and larch trees.

Pools of blood could be seen in the light of floodlights that illuminated the site. A pile of twisted and broken skis, ski poles, boots goggles and gloves, some smeared with blood, had been collected by rescuers.

At the time of the accident, a second cable car was brought to a halt by an emergency braking system, and its sole passenger, an operator, was removed by helicopter. He was taken to a local hospital and treated for shock.

The site of the accident is wedged into a corner of northern Italy between the Austrian and Swiss borders. The cable car, which carried skiers regularly in winter from the tiny town of Cavalese to the slopes of Mount Cermis, to the south, was the scene of a major accident in 1976, when a cable car crashed to the ground because of a mechanical fault, killing 42 people.

In addition to the Marine investigation, Italian judicial officials said they were opening a separate inquiry into the cause of the accident.

In Rome, parliamentary deputies of the Party of the Democratic Left, the former Communists, called for an emergency session of Parliament's defense committee for Wednesday. The parliamentary whip of the Democratic left, Fabio Mussi, said he had requested the urgent meeting, noting that in months past various deputies had drawn attention to the dangers posed by the military flights.

Mr. Mussi's group was acting at least in part to blunt an offensive by the more radical Communist Refounding Party, which took the incident as an occasion to denounce the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's presence in Italy. Marco Rizzo, a parliamentary deputy of Communist Refounding and a supporter of the center-left Government of Prime Minister Romano Prodi, said, ''The presence of United States bases in Italy makes no sense and is only interference.''

Referring to tensions between the United States and Iraq, Mr. Mussi said, ''We would not want other Italians to pay the price of preparations for an attack on Saddam Hussein.''

Prime Minister Prodi, who returned today from a visit to Estonia, spoke by phone with President Clinton, who expressed his condolences and assured him that Italian authorities would be fully involved in an investigation into the tragedy.

By tonight, Cavalese was quiet. The bodies recovered from the wreckage had been brought to a local hospital. The snow-covered slopes where the cable plunged to earth were roped off by security officials.

Photos: Rescue workers in the Dolomites recovered 20 bodies from the cable car that plunged 260 feet to the ground. (Associated Press/RAI Television)(pg. A1); One of the dead is carried away from the cable car. An American military plane, a sophisticated electronic surveillance jet attached to the mission in Bosnia, was flying low, despite complaints, and cut the cable. (Reuters)(pg. A4) Map of Italy showing location of Mount Cermis: The cable car of a ski lift fell some 260 feet at Mount Cermis in Italy. (pg. A4)